It is worse to me than the tolling of a
bell; for saddest dead of all are they who have only a "name to live."
The truth is, there is more to do on a rainy day than on any other. In
addition to all the sweet, needful, possible business of living and
working, and learning and helping, which is for all days, there is the
beauty of the rainy day to see, the music of the rainy day to hear. It
drums on the window-panes, chuckles and gurgles at corners of houses,
tinkles in spouts, makes mysterious crescendoes and arpeggio chords
through the air; and all the while drops from the eaves and upper
window-ledges are beating time as rhythmical and measured as that of a
metronome,--time to which our own souls furnish tune, sweet or sorrowful,
inspiriting or saddening, as we will. It is a curious experiment to try
repeating or chanting lines in time and cadence following the patter of
raindrops on windows. It will sometimes be startling in its effect: no
metre, no accent fails of its response in the low, liquid stroke of the
tender drops,--there seems an uncanny _rapport_ between them at once.
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